1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a control apparatus and in particular to a control apparatus for electronic equipment for making a reservation for video recording or for directly controlling the electronic equipment such as a video cassette recorder.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Various recent home appliances such as video cassette recorders have a multiple of functions. Various switches for setting various operation modes are provided on the main body of the appliance. The operation of those switches is complicated. Even if the switches are few in number, the operation process is complicated. Accordingly, few users can freely use timer function for making a reservation of the video recording of the VTR.
Various approaches have been proposed to make the operation of such the appliances easier. For example, the bar code reader is used to simplify the input operation. Instructions and various items of information are inputted in natural language, that is, in human voice from a microphone. The approach relying on the bar code reader has a low degree of freedom, since bar code labels which indicate various items of information of a program to be reserved should be provided. The application range of this approach is limited. Therefore, it is considered that the approach relying on the natural language is favorable.
In a voice input operated apparatus in which operation instructions for designating the operation modes of the information recording/reproducing apparatus such as a VCR or VTR can be inputted in human voice, a voice input device has been proposed which is capable of stably controlling the VCR by generating control commands to the VCR with reference to the status data of the information recording/reproducing apparatus.
A control data input device has been proposed which is capable of controlling an object by analyzing the natural language which is formed of a combination of words representing a plurality of control instructions to provide the object to be controlled with a control instruction.
Although these techniques are able to set and control the operation mode of the appliances such as a VTR, there is much room for improvement in response to an input. Only numerals and characters representative of the content of the reservation are displayed as the data train on a display panel. Preliminary knowledge is necessary to deal with the case in which correction is made in the course of input or the complete reservation cannot be made. Every user cannot easily operate the VCR. Many users find it difficult to accept data comprising only a numeral train. An improvement in man-machine interface has been demanded.
The present invention has been made under the above mentioned circumstances. It is an object to provide a control apparatus of electronic equipment which make it possible for everybody to easily operate the appliance and which provide a natural man-machine interface.